


Because To Laugh Is Proper To The Man

by grayglube



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Comeplay, F/F, F/M, Filthy, Incest, Multi, Threesome, Ygritte lives, au-ish, valarmorekinks prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 04:43:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7560826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayglube/pseuds/grayglube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s something she will never give him, there’s something Sansa will never get from her. Comfort. They’ve lost the same things, too many times over. There are so many losses Ygritte knows she does not know, never will. She’s always been half a stranger, but so have they, to each other, to the brothers on the wall to the dead kings and queens of the south. To their family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because To Laugh Is Proper To The Man

**Author's Note:**

> Written or the valarmorekinks lj prompt: Ygritte always comes to her after, full of Jon's seed. And Sansa holds her open, eats her out until every trace of Jon is consumed.

She had not realized the damage they’d done to each other, making themselves soft with slow hands and sharing heat under their furs. His dying has hardened her, hardened him. When he went into the dark, red snow seeping a wider circle into the grey and black world of the Wall it made them the people who would survive what has come, again.

 

He is not the same man, not even when he fucks her.

 

He is hungrier and heavier atop her.

 

It is not a bad thing that war has taken his tenderness. She is not sure what death took from him. She wonders what being a King who brought peace will steal.

 

* * *

 

 

She rides with him to his sister’s keep.

 

His _cousin’s_ keep, for true, but he still calls her sister. The Red Wolf’s letters all say _brother_.

 

The keep was called by a different name once, now they call it Lady’s Keep. Ygritte bellows and put inquiries to the King in the North about silk dresses and if she’ll be expected to wear one.

 

His answering stare makes slick pool in her breeches.

 

She wonders if she’ll ever not want him.

 

They go away from his own warm hall to the colder stones of where his stony sister resides.

 

Ygritte goes but rebuilding the Wall seems to her to be some silly child’s dream. What would it be meant to shield? She’d worried silent and scathing, trying to seem only her usual degree of off put by southron ways, until he stood from his chair and came close the eve before the took to horse. “Think I’m becoming too much of a kneeler, then? I don’t want to keep wildings out. The dead come back sometimes, don’t they? We won, but the snows are deep.”

 

“You’re afraid then.” It sounded harder than she’d meant.

 

His mouth twisted and he’d only shook his head, pulled her to him and she’d shuffled further into his arms.

 

He’d knelt then, holding up her linen tunic, one of his, mouthing at where she is always hot when he is near.

 

* * *

 

 

On their second night in his sister’s keep he is called from their bed after they’ve sated each other. They’ve decided to build the Wall up at night when it is colder, as if such a task needed actual thought to be decided on. But he leaves to talk to the other lords who have arrived in the night all the same.

 

They will talk of the Gift and the Wall and the _North_.

 

His force has fatigued her, left her aching and she might give voice to the hope that he’d stay under the furs, pressed against her. She’s not too tired for him to have her again.

 

But he goes and she is sleepless, it is colder in a strange bed that does not smell of them as wholly as the one in his Lord’s Chambers.

 

It is a darker place. She walks.

 

In the halls on the other side of the keep she sees his sister, his wolf keeping pace. Sansa stops whn they have come close, two women walking halls that belonged to dead men once, and looks down at the beast, “One of you sets him outside the door, he does not like to wait to be let back in.”

 

Ygritte does not know if there is bitterness or judgement in his sister’s mouth. His wolf watches them if he is allowed to stay in their chambers during the act, she never minded when they were in camp among men they had climbed the Wall with, Spearwives, horses, it had not mattered then that they might be heard and seen, but his wolf is a different affair.

 

“I thought you’d be off to talk.” Ygritte says, Ghost has not yet padded to her. It sticks in her gut like a rock that her man’s beast might like his sister better. It’s a petty thing, her tired worries. She shakes them loose.

 

“I’ve already been. I told them Jon would come later, when he was finished tending other business.”

 

She does not know if his sister is jesting or mocking, there’s no smile or grin or glare to press forward one before the other. Ghost leaves his sister’s side.

 

He comes forward to sniff at her, between her legs she is damp with his seed and her slick. She pushes the wolf away with a firm hand, “nuff of that, then.”

 

When Ygritte looks up there’s a ghost of a smile on his sister’s lips but it fades in the dark like a shadow after a door has been opened on it, “To bed then.” She says.

 

Ygritte nods, grunts something that might be taken as ‘good night’.

 

She feels his sister watching her and his wolf walk away but when she looks back but the solitary Lady of Lady’s Keep has already entered her chambers.

 

* * *

 

 

She rides alone out into the lands beyond the Keep,

 

The snows are not as deep as they were a fortnight ago and the air does not smell so heavily of ice. Soon, it will smell like dirt and then she will see what Spring looks like. She wants to feel the green under the snow pressed into her skin one day.

 

She has never thought she’d would like to see Spring.

 

It never seemed like something that would come, something none of them wished for because none believed any had ever truly seen it or would live to again if they had.

 

Another horse comes to rest beside hers.

 

Sansa looks up at the sky. “Do you hawk?”

 

Ygritte wonders why every time southrons come upon someone they must always talk. “What?”

 

“Hawking, do you?”

 

“…I don’t think so.”

 

“Come if you like. I’ll teach you.”

 

“I’m going back now.”

 

“Enjoy the ride back.” His sisters kicks heels into her mare and rides hard into the lands she’s claimed with blood and the night’s she’d spent in a monster’s bed.

 

* * *

 

 

Sigorn’s brother looks like a woman with how wet with love he is.

 

The big woman Tormund has lost the rest of his sense to stops all attempts of the wilding to court the king’s sister.

 

He says he will climb the wall to win her admiration. Ygritte points out he’s already on the same side. He says he will steal her. Tormund tells him if he tries he will die. Ygritte does not disagree. The sister of the King is the one woman she does not think a man would chance his life to steal as his.

 

There’s something in his sister’s stare that is vicious when men come to court her.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s something too cold about his sister. Not dead, she’s simply not alive. She is kind enough and speaks soft enough, but nothing touches her. Not in her eyes and her hands hold themselves, she is always alone and something in the set of her shoulders wears at Ygritte. Something superior and southron and unnatural. Something that isn’t as real or as feeling as the rest of them.

 

Nothing touches her. His sister has done nothing to make them feel unwelcome, all the same Ygritte resents the other woman for it. Small conversations and passing one another in the hall leave her wanting to say something unkind.

 

Ygritte says nothing, only finds Jon, climbs a top him and drives a storm out of her that howls. He sleeps, prone and settled and so still he might be dead again, she leaves the bed and walks. The sconces are lit, tapers burn and she can feel the heat waft up from below the stones, below the keep, it is not the gentle sluice of Winterfell where one might believe a castle is breathing softly, the waters run warm there. Here there is only a hot parched gasp from the earth, it is not a hearth or heartblood under his sister’s Keep it is scorched earth, blackening the stones.

 

She finds his beast where he always wanders.

 

She stands at the door to his sister’s chambers.

 

A girl opens the door for her, Sansa bathes behind a screen.

 

The lady of the keep sends the maid away.

 

“Expecting someone?”

 

She answers from the behind the screen, “There’s never time in the day for this.”

 

The idea of a woman like Sansa in an empty bed sends a vicious thrill through her. Ygritte has a King in her own now, a man who has killed more he can count, who has been a bastard and noble and hard and strong and he is _hers_.

 

“Why are you here?” His sister asks.

 

“I’ll go, then.”

 

His sister makes a sound of protest, firm and a demand as sharp as the one’s Ygritte has heard from her brother. The shadow of her hand waves and draws her close, Ygritte follows it and comes to stand next to the copper tub.

 

“I meant _here_. In the castle.”

 

“He wants to build the Wall again.”

 

She drinks from a simple pewter cup and Ygritte can see the shape of her breasts under the water, they sit higher than her own, fuller because she’s always been fed, but there are the short lines of many scars, made by some careful cruel hand.

 

His sister doesn’t sink lower, she simply scoffs. “We don’t know what we want.”

 

Ygritte finds the idea only moderately insulting, she tries to not take offense. She wonders when she started to hold her tongue, it makes her feel as if she’s been trained when she wasn’t paying attention. Too much warmth and food and fucking has made her lazy she thinks sometimes. “That’s the difference between us then.” She tells his sister because she is not so well fed that she can’t still snap her teeth.

 

“No, it’s true of most.” Sansa says and then, “Only monsters and wanderers know what they want.” Her hand floats on the water.

 

“Like in the songs.” She goes on.

 

His sister likes songs and Ygritte smiles like it is a thing for children.

 

“This castle used to be the Bolton’s, Ramsay wanted power because power let him hurt people whenever he wanted. I thought I wanted love but then I learned what love is worth, safety is better bought.”

 

“None of us are safe.”

 

“I don’t care about what might _still_ come,” Sansa answers. Her voice is toneless, Ygritte wonders if someday the Other’s might return. She’d rather leave such fears behind, in tales to scare children and songs drunk men weep over.

 

Sansa offer her the cup, Ygritte finishes the ale she’d expected to be wine. His sister tell her, “If something does then we’ll win or we’ll die. The Others would have just killed us, there wouldn’t have been any thought in it, if we lost we were weak, if we won we were strong. We’re strong still.”

 

“Aye.”

 

“Jon thought wanted he wanted was admiration, respect for the man he is,” Sansa stops, silent, thinking.

 

“And you know what he wants?”

 

“He wants to be free of this.”

 

Ygritte knows his sister is not wrong. Her brother had never wanted to be a King, he only ever wanted to be something honorable and good. Ygritte wonders if he still even wants that much.

 

She wonders if he thinks of that cave still, dreams of it like she does. She asks his sister then, “Tell me what _I_ want, then.”

 

“You want love, you never thought about it before him, before he was yours but love is greedy, never well fed enough, always wanting for another bite, and he feeds you but you want more of him.”

 

“…”

 

“So, that makes you more of a fool girl than me. By your own words.”

 

His sister has seen her sharp glares, heard her scoffs. Now, Ygritte faces words of a similar sort meant for her. It might humble her if it didn’t turn her blood into something wild and mean. It is that which leads her to give back harsh words, “You’re lonely here, and cold in that big bed no one shares with you.”

 

His sister only lifts a wet shoulder, water rolls down over the swell of it. “I like it. I’m alone in it.”

 

“Isn’t that a sad, small lot, they say you’re beautiful but that doesn’t mean shite.”

 

“It’s the only reason they didn’t kill me, I still paid for it.”

 

She rises then from the water and Ygritte looks, she wants to see what his sister will do when someone looks at her. The scars on her breasts and shoulders like a mantle and the deeper longer ones between her ribs like frost on water might be overlooked because her teats are still high and there’s fire between her thighs but her back is a brutal thing to see. She’d been beaten with something that made her fine smooth skin burst like the skin of a summer fruit. There’s the curved pucker of an old wound on her calf, like something sunk teeth into her and then shook.

 

Still she is beautiful, some fierce thing under her fine gowns and careful plaits.

 

His sister dries and speaks, “I thought of it. At Winterfell, when I was there. Locked away, waiting for him to come at night, every night, sometimes I thought he would kill me, and he didn’t, then I thought of doing him harm by doing it myself. And then I thought whatever misfortune it would bring to his house I would still be dead, I’d never see it come about. So, what would it matter? So then, there was something else I wanted instead.”

           

“What?”

 

“I wanted to watch his house die.”

 

Ygritte remembers, she was there the morning after the battle, staring into the kennels, the happy beasts sleeping over blood and bones. Jon had been there too. He’d smiled the same as his sister does now.

           

* * *

 

 

She sees them sit by each other when all the others have left. They are close in discussion, his sister presses a hand to his wolf’s questing head. It’s almost too close for her to watch. They sit like lovers might.

 

They are kin but not close enough kin to stop his men or her maids from talking. Ygritte has heard all the talk. How queenly his sister is, how fine a match they would make. No speaks the words loud but they do not go unheard.

 

They have words for her too, southron words that make her something she is not. She’s his woman, not a jewel or a slave or a whore he bought. I

 

It’s all whispers, there are so many and she wonders why no one speaks loud enough to be truly heard and handled.

 

Even her own ilk murmur now about the dragon queen who has written letters who will come back one day. Maybe. Ygritte has little faith in whispers and murmurings.

 

Jon Snow is only Jon Snow, there’s never been proof beyond words of whose sprog he really is and even if the pale haired woman from strange lands had three beasts who might have still come sooner to fight for land she claimed was hers anyway she wouldn’t have managed to steal a King.

 

Jon Snow says he’s a wolf, he’s only ever known the cold.

 

When the dragon queen had come, too late to help them win a final battle they all remember him saying, telling, commanding as a King might, “Send men for the Watch and we will do what we have always done, guard the realm against what might kill us all in the night and in the cold.”

 

“You have another name, if you ever want it come South. That name you haven’t claimed will bring you nothing good here.” The Dragon Queen had told him before she’d gone the way she’d come back South to speak with another King, one with a dragon’s name.

 

They said she’s married her nephew, Ygritte wonders if cousins are closer in blood.

 

* * *

 

 

She rubs her hair into his chest, half asleep and mostly soused on goat’s milk. “They think you want to fuck her.” Her tone is low, like something baying and dying, there’s a touch of humor in it. She is a drunken fool for him.

 

“Who?”

 

“Your sister.”

 

He chuffs and she feels it, the cut rumble of his amusement, he pulls fingers through her tangles, ones he had caused in his haste, something songs played on a harp say is ardor or love but is really just fucking.

 

“She’s kissed by fire too.”

 

“So is Tormund.” He counters like he’s defending a child’s wooden sword, bare handed and without worry.

 

His hand rests between her shoulders.

 

“Do you?”

 

“Want to fuck Tormund?”

 

She bites at his breast, at where his heart is, leaves her mark there, on him, he will bruise, he rubs at it, as if he’s been nipped by some small creature.

 

“She’s not really your sister.”

 

“You’re the one in her chambers most often.”

 

Silently she waits for him to say more, he doesn’t go on and she is left to agree, roll off of the warmth his bare body offers. “Aye.”

 

His hoarse voice stalls her from sleep. “Come here.”

 

She goes. And he puts her under him, he hefts her thighs to his hips and drags himself like iron between her legs, he’s a brand against her warmest flesh.

 

“What is it you would like me to say?”

 

“You’re mine.”

 

“Aye.”

 

She reaches for his cock, the length and press of it, he nudges himself inside to taunt, to make her an animal for him again. “I don’t care about your eyes, just this.” She tells him.

 

He smirks.

 

“And your pretty mouth.” She adds on a gasp his mouth steals from her.

 

They share the same mouth, him and his sister.

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I see how you look at him.”

 

“…”

 

“You want him.”

 

“…”

 

“You want him because you think his pretty cock might be what helps you sleep at night.”

 

“Enjoyment and the act have nothing to do with the other.”

 

“...”

 

“If I wanted I could say ‘visit my hot bed’ to any man here and he would come and I could do whatever it is he’s wished to have done by a woman to him. When you were at the Wall with Jon I was in Winterfell and it didn’t matter how well I learned or how well I endured, it was never that part that was what Ramsay Bolton wanted. He only wanted to hurt me, if he had an excuse then it was better but if he didn’t he’d just devise some new indignity for me to fail to perform. And I might fail, I did fail, but never more than a handful of times because not pleasing him meant he got to play his other games. Pride is expendable when there’s pain like that to be had.”

 

“Why should I feel badly about what some jumped up southron prick did?”

 

“You shouldn’t, that’s not my point.” His sister has snatched her hand as she turns to go.

 

Ygritte does not know why she returns to talk and spite and sometimes curse the other woman issed by fire, she pulls against his sister’s hand, “Let go.”

 

“You enjoy Jon but you wonder if that matters, if it’s enough.” Something solemn sits in his sister’s eyes when she says, “It is.”

           

And Ygritte has no words.

 

His sister does not let go, her hand is strong, and her pull is stronger. Her mouth is warm and the room is like the gasp of a giant. Ygritte has kissed many men but never has she been kissed by a woman in that way.

 

There is no jest in it, only heat, only the hot heady press of a tongue against her mouth, for a moment and then it is gone.

 

“You smell like him. You have him bed you before you come here. You want me to know.”

 

“You should have a man of your own.”

 

“I don’t bathe at night because there isn’t time during the day, I do it because it was something they made me do, I’ve done it for so long now. I don’t sleep anyway. You don’t know the value of it, smelling of him, the things you’ve done together, things you hoped for and wanted.”

 

“So what?”

 

“Lie in a bed too hot next to a man who you can feel inside long after he’s left you wounded and hurt and be unable to do anything but wish he might kill you finally instead of shame you because he’s wary and stronger and more vicious than you and then you might know.”

 

“Find one to sing you songs then.”

 

“Why?” And his sister smiles just like he does when she says, “You come almost every night.”

 

“…”

 

And when his sister kisses her it is soft for only a moment, the press of it is not something to be pulled away from and Ygritte lets her mouth fall open, it’s an easy thing. His sister has the same mouth as he.

 

And when his sister, no _cousin_ , pushes her back to the bed that’s softer than the one she’s used to there is no struggle in her limbs. Ygritte wonders if this might be what it feels like to be stolen.

 

 _Sansa_ , she bids her to call her by her name.

 

Ygritte says nothing, only opens her mouth to another kiss and lets a tongue that tastes sweet and sharp touch to hers like something unsure, trapping. Deceit is what his sister tastes like and soon her kiss is slick as it steals something, a voice, a small protest, another long sigh.

 

Ygritte wonders if his sister is a witch, all the fight has left her as she lies under Sansa. All the blunt words are simply gone and she looks up at the woman that men of the north, lords and wildlings have dreamt of stealing, a woman they are afraid of every having.

 

Sansa she says again, she wants to be called by her name and Ygritte stays silent, her mouth screwing shut and head turning when that mouth so much like her lover’s comes close.

 

“You’re shaking.”

 

Ygritte knows, his sister is beautiful and half a song and her dressing gown slips from her breasts and suddenly she seems less like a woman and more a wolf.

 

The Red Wolf. They call her the Red Wolf.

 

New slickness slips from her at the sight if his sister’s grin, the wild smile of something that has no shame.

 

Calling her by her name does not seem like enough. She might call her milady if she could push it from between her teeth to sound as she intends it, half jest, half scorn but instead when Ygritte breathes it is only half a word.

 

His sister smiles and stripes her of her thin breeches, old things, and there are no small clothes to find their way to the floor. There’s the ache of her lover and Sansa’s brother still between her thighs and the seed he’s spilled on her thighs and inside of where she weeps heat from again.

 

Sansa only touches fingers to her swollen cunt, her fingers are not as soft as Ygritte has thought them to be, worn from the harp and her endless stitches. They stroke her tenderly towards ruin, writhing across the softness of the bed.

 

Sansa licks her brother’s seed from inside of her. Softly, slow.

 

Ygritte does not think she’s ever felt something as animal as the pairing of relief and shame from the act. She wonders again if she has become too soft and southron. His sister’s tongue is something alive and questing and her cunt grabs at the wet thing spearing inside before it slips over the nib that peeks out to be laved at.

 

It is not a Lord’s Kiss it is a wolf curious and without fatigue.

 

Ygritte keens like a girl under a man’s furs for the first time.

 

“That’s what he tastes like.” She says, viciously, her own shame has made her angry, she want’s his sister to feel the same.

 

Sansa only breaches her with gentle fingers, once and then pulls them to slick the rest of her cunt, knuckles traces the shape of her, slow and careful. Ygritte wonders if it might be because she’s waiting for some praise, some word of thanks, begging.

 

But she requires none of it, only bows her head to the work she has yet to finish, her hair spreads like the warmth of furs over and between her brother’s lover’s thighs.

 

They lie close after and Ygritte puts her hand firmly between his sister’s warm legs and finds nothing to prove want or need. There’s no expected slickness of want or a plea to be touched like she has touched falling from her mouth.

 

“Being well taught at the act doesn’t mean much does it? Go deeper if you like. I pleased you just as well as he might have, I don’t love you. He does, though. You should be happy with that. It’s more than most have.”

 

“You…”

 

Sansa rolls to her back her breasts lovely and legs long and eyes still cold, “I’ve always taken well to my lessons. Every foul thing ladies aren’t supposed to do.”

 

“…”

 

Askance their eyes catch and his sister only shucks a breath off before her eyes shut, she is disappointed, “Nothing to say? Go back to your own bed then. Go back to _his_ bed.”

 

Nothing touches her, Ygritte had forgotten.

 

* * *

 

 

When next they speak Ygritte is cruel.

 

His sister stares out at the melting snows.

“Jon could take a woman now, any he wants. But you’re his, you won’t ever be able to choose again. He’d be a cuckolder king. He’d have to send you away or call you whore and tear down all that love you thought was only ever yours and his. He’d have to make it a jest.”

           

“He wouldn’t.”

 

“You love him, you wouldn’t make him do that. But you left behind what was behind the Wall. I don’t hate you or him, you’ve suffered too.”

 

* * *

 

 

Walking through the Gift there are children everywhere. She wonders what her children would be, _when_ they would be, bastards, princes, wild things with her hair and his brooding.

 

* * *

 

 

“You went out to see them today.” Sansa says, there’s nothing that happens that she does not know. Ygritte shrugs, “He’s still there, with Tormund.”

 

“But you left, to come here.” His sister smiles, gently, “Share my bath.”

 

The tub is almost too small for their long limbs.

 

* * *

 

 

As they sup, his hand slips to the inside of her leg. He grins, lazy and wide. He wants her and it sends her blood south.

 

Sansa watches them, smiles, turns and discusses something with Sigorn’s southron bride who drinks from her husband’s cup like it’s mother’s milk. Ygritte looks around, there are many who will go off to other beds in the night, all except the column of fire that sits tall and well-seen by the entire hall.

 

His sister will go to bed alone because she prefers it.

 

It’s sad and seems wrong.

 

The hall goes quiet when the Lady of Lady’s Keep moves to play the high harp, a too big thing, found and restrung in Winterfell, brought by the King for his sister

 

The wildling men are near silent, it’s for a moment, as if Mance Rayder has come to sing a ballad of some brave man or comely wench, a ghost they’ve all been haunted by, the Northerners all thunder when she’s done.

 

She sings again, she sings all the songs they cry out for.

 

She plays and sings and there is not a man who would not crawl to her bed then, there’s power in her Ygritte has not seen. As sure as her brother may lead men into battle they may never walk free from so does his sister lead men to ruin while still they breathe.

 

* * *

 

 

He tells her that he knows there is strife between them, he’s seen the looks the exchange, he thinks them unfriendly, she stalls him with a look and says, “We talk.”

           

“Do you?”

 

“At night. When you’re off.”

           

“I’m glad.” He tells her.

 

He does not like silent fury, or secret hate.

 

After they finish with each other for the night she sits at the end of their hared bed, legs folded and starving, they’ve missed the meal. Her holds her spine in the warmth of his palm. “She’s never known this.”

           

“Who?”

 

“Sansa.”

           

“…” He says nothing, only waits. He knows they are both more than the women they have pretended to be, Ygritte knows he sees her soft underbelly, knows he sees his sister’s steeliness.

 

“She told me about things. I said things. Things I would not say now.”

           

“And now you feel bad?”

 

“…mmm.”

           

“Tell her then.”

 

“That’s not what she wants.”

           

“Oh?”

 

“I don’t want to talk of your sister when I could have your cock again.”

 

* * *

 

 

She goes once when she hasn’t been yet abed with her brother. Sansa says nothing only mouths at her breast, Ygritte feels something unfold deeply inside, guilt. It’s no longer just anger that brings her to the lady’s chambers. It’s isn’t friendship either.

 

* * *

 

 

She wears something made for a lady, and he only stares, the dead look in his eyes before he launches himself towards her, as if he means to do her harm, his hands are strong and sure and he wonders if there might be a silk dress he could tear off of her.

 

He stares at her breasts as if he has not seen them before once he has pulled her from the nightrail that is much too long for her. He touches at the curve of it, “I hadn’t meant to make a mark on you.”

 

He knows it is not his. His eyes study her and she wonders what he thinks.

 

“I know I am not always here.” He says softly, close and warm.

 

“It’s not the same if it’s a woman.”

 

And he knows even if’s he’s pretended not to see.

 

“I’m your man.” He tells her and she thinks she understands.

 

“Does that make your sister my woman?”

 

“I think it makes you hers.”

 

Ygritte scowls, he kisses her mouth and his beard rubs pink into her skin, a sweet scorching.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s something she will never give him, there’s something Sansa will never get from her. Comfort. They’ve lost the same things, too many times over. There are so many losses Ygritte knows she does not know, never will. She’s always been half a stranger, but so have they, to each other, to the brothers on the wall to the dead kings and queens of the south. To their family.

 

* * *

 

 

He comes upon them sharing a bath, his wolf follows.

 

“Snow.”

 

“Ygritte.”

 

Ygritte rises.

 

His sister and his wolf watch them at their bed play.

 

* * *

 

 

She won’t ask if he wants his sister, his cousin, _Sansa_. He’ll say nothing, he’ll say no, he’ll ask her the same question and she’d say nothing, deny and say no and in either case they’d call the other a liar.

 

Ygritte doesn’t ask, she acts. It’s easier than speaking on things that felt better if they were done instead of talked about.

 

She brings him his cousin, she might as well still be his sister and it wouldn’t matter if she was. He’d want her, she’d let him have her. Ygritte laughs, “You’re afraid,” she tells him, there’s a crookedness in her bringing them all together in his bed.

 

He laughs too, doesn’t deny anything.

 

She touches the girl he’s called sister first. She shivers and sighs. Her eyes shut softly. She’s melting like snows in spring, turning warm. When Jon touches her she starts and something wakes, something hungry. Something that’s never been touched kindly by a man.

 

He brings her to his lap, Ygritte sits on her heels behind, presses her palms to his skin, a mantel of fire falls around him, over the strength of his arms, the breadth of his shoulders.

 

He's never felt more readied for the task. There’s peace in the act with Ygritte, chaos with Sansa. Its urges him and her countering hips rolling might be some practiced motion but slowly they become half-formed pushes towards something like pleasure.

 

Ygritte sees how she wants him as deeply set inside as she might have him, deeper than anyone else, closer, pressed inside harder, ridding her of what she’s felt there before, awful things, things she has not forgotten. She’s swollen and open and filled with too much want to urge him on with words, their mouths are wet and press against flushed skins. They curve together and Ygritte knows how long they’ve been curling around the things they have built up between them, for decency, for the burn of something denied, unseemly triumph they find together. Sansa calls him a King and Ygritte shudders.

 

The words make her feel like something he owns and in his own bed she won’t deny him that. She’d offer him anything if it would ease the distress he has over ruling men he still thinks equals.

 

Feverish and unstopped. Musk and blood where there might have only been dry bones.

 

He pulls his woman close, kisses her, has them kiss, it’s wet like she is wet, its sweet like the gentle rock of his hips, it’s the filth of a bawdy song, it’s something she’s had already and something he’s craved. A deserved reward that’s been given eagerly.

 

“I’ll lick your seed from her and then I’ll taste her on your cock.” She tells him close at his ear once he’s been laid on his back, cock jutting from the thicket of curls she’s had pressed against her own embered sex.

 

His sister strokes him, her slick warm on him, she presses herself close and guides him back to where he’s slipped free of.

 

Ygritte can see what she has only felt, the pitch of him in and out. She trails curious fingers over where he’s stretched his sister open, his own tender sac. They both cry out, softly, with a grunt of surprise.

 

Soon for Ygritte there’s only the smoke taste of him and the brine of his sister in her mouth, no words just the unhampered reach of hands towards her.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the quote "One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span, because to laugh is proper to the man"


End file.
